The Goblin Bride (Beneath Sands Book 1) by Emma Hamm (good short books TXT) 📕

hated every moment of killing them. It had never been hard before. They were simply animals that were no longer useful. He would have done the same to a fish. Yet this time he saw her eyes in their faces. He saw the blunted fingers and thought them pitiful.

  Killing them had felt wrong. They had thoughts just like the goblins. And though none of the men would have been as talented or as lovely as his bride, they were still the same kind. In a way, it felt as though he was bringing down the knife upon her neck.

  He had to find her. The mob mentality was making him nervous that she was going to get caught in the middle of it. He knew how bloody battles could become. He had fought against other tribes. He had killed many humans. Lines blurred when in the middle of death and gore. She could easily be killed by mistake.

  It was only by pure luck that he managed to be in the right place at the right time. He felt the harsh hand on his shoulder and frowned when he realized the hand was trying to turn him. Who thought that they could force him to do anything?

  He turned with a snarl. His teeth were bared and his claws ready to kill. But he stopped short by the sight of Jane slung across the humans shoulder. He knew the shape of her without seeing her face.

  “Let her go.”

  His voice rang loud in the cave. It gave him nothing but pleasure to see the human flinch from the sound.

  There were very few who could say they were not intimidated by him. Ruric was larger than the other goblins and strong. He knew he was straight out of a human’s nightmare and because of that he expected the human to drop Jane and run. That would have been the smart thing for him to do.

  But he did something that Ruric did not expect.

  He began to laugh.

  “I never thought I’d see your ugly face again.”

  The man stepped away from him, leaning to gently place Jane onto the ground. Ruric flinched at the movement. The human had no right to place hands upon her. He could see there were scratches upon her arms that were not the ones that he had given her.

  “You don’t like me touching her, do you?”

  He looked up at the man with his eyes narrowed.

  “What is this then? Some case of beast in love with beauty?”

  Again Ruric said nothing, looking for some way to kill the man. He deserved a death that was slow and painful.

  “It is!” The laugh that came out of Simon was hardly amused. Dark and twisted, it was the laugh of a man that knew hatred very well. “She’s hardly a beauty my friend. There are plenty of women better than her.”

  Simon’s head cocked to the side as his face furrowed in anger. “You’ll never have her, goblin. She’s human, you are not. You think she’ll stay here with you?”

  “I am going to kill you, human.”

  “No you aren’t. She came to let us go, you know. She wanted the humans to live. Kill the goblins, she said. Do you really think she loves you back?” He wanted to hurt the goblin, but he also wanted to distract him. The bead of sweat dripping down his temple betrayed that.

  Still, the words shivered down Ruric’s spine. Jane would never do that. She wouldn’t betray them like that. He had known she was angry and that she was feeling alone here. He had tried to explain to her that she was not. But surely she wouldn’t have done something so foolish. She wouldn’t have harmed the goblins that had taken care of her.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well you could ask her yourself but I’m afraid she’s not awake for questioning.” Simon toed her limp body, nudging her in the ribs until she groaned.

  “Do not touch her!”

  “Oh it’s far too late for that. Don’t you ever wonder why you found us together? You split up a happily married couple, all for what? A little piece of tail?”

  Ruric growled deep in his throat. The sound vibrated roughly, anger starting to cloud his vision. He hated this man, just as he had always hated the humans. He was going to kill to him. Tear his entrails out and let him rot in a cavern somewhere so deep he would never again see his precious sun.

  Just as he lunged forward, the human leaned down to place his hands on her though. Jane, the one human that had made him thinking differently. She was the one he had thought was filled with light. Never in his life had he thought he would be so lucky as to find one such as her.

  Perhaps he had been wrong. If the human was telling the truth, then she hated it here. She hated him and his people with a fire that had caused her to wish them all dead. With such a small group of humans, weak and underfed, it had been a suicide mission from the start. Perhaps that was what she wanted. A swift death that would send her back to the place she wished to be.

  “Ach, mate you don’t want to hurt her now do you?”

  He had stilled as soon as the human touched her. His body ached to move as the human touched skin that was his. Lingered upon curves that were to be touched by no one else. He had saved this woman. He had given her everything. Jane was his.

  “You’re going to let me go, goblin, and I’m going to take her with me. She’s going to live and you’re going to stay here. That’s how this is going to work.”

  “Never.” The word ripped through his chest and throat with a ferocity that startled